I can't post this on Reddit because I don’t have enough karma, so I’m sharing this idea here instead.
What if the "withering rose" animation (from the end of Noelle’s mansion sequence during the Weird Route in Chapter 4) was brought back, but slightly altered?
Instead of just showing the rose corolla, it would depict a full rose, including the stem and thorns. After the petals fall, the stem would bend and connect its ends to form a ring - a (symbolic) thorn ring. It would wrap around Noelle’s finger twice to account for the length of the stem and also to symbolize that we're basically fully controlling Noelle after this point.
The whole animation would kinda look like this (graphic design is my passion!11):
(Not sure about adding blood but it could help finally clarify whether all Lightners bleed in the Dark World and Lightner monsters still turn to dust in the Light World, or how it works.)
Personally I think it's best as the red pixel. The deltarune.com pages for Chapter 4 already do a red dot, so it's a nice connection to have. Using the rose seems risky in general for the way the whole scene plays out, but that just may be me. I think people were valid in their concerns about how it was interpreted, and I'm sure Toby Fox changed it because it was the complete opposite way he wanted people to see it. People might till interpret the rose decaying in a bad way. We might eventually see a different revision, though.
Right after the rose animation plays, the "full Snowgrave Route indication sound effect" is heard. This likely signals that, from this point on, the player is locked into the Weird Route or that it's too late for Noelle to see the player's/Kris's actions as just a prank. My altered version of this animation would emphasize this symbolism even more.
The "red dot" represents something entirely different. It symbolizes Noelle (her SOUL??) being imbued with the red SOUL trait, allowing her to be briefly controlled by the player. (Since it's currently just a small dot, the player only controls her for a second before the cutscene ends.) Omitting the ability to move Noelle/the red dot in the first cutscene (in Noelle's mansion) makes the symbolism feel inconsistent, given that the second red dot cutscene (in the Dark World, when Susie is talking to the Old Man and the player chooses to see how Noelle is doing) is optional in the Weird Route anyway. Ideally, the second red dot cutscene would be the only one in this chapter but was made required to continue the Weird Route.
I don't think the rose is going to come back since it was clearly in response to a specific interpretation of the scene. At this point I don't think we know if it was due to Nintendo, or if Toby was responding to backlash, or if the scene was just grossly misinterpreted. But I doubt it's returning.
Yeah, at this point I'm not sure if I want the rose to return, after seeing the backlash Toby received from rightoids on Twitter, who very obviously wanted it to return just for their own sick interpretations and fanfics. Still, I think my idea would make it obvious that this scene doesn't mean Kris SA'ed Noelle...
